A New App, Which Recognizes Art, Set to Transform the Art Fair Experience

From Thursday, March 3, to Sunday, March 6, 2011, iPhone-toting visitors to Pulse, SCOPE, VOLTA NY, Fountain, and Moving Image will experience the New York art fairs in a new way thanks to a “next-gen” mobile technology that recognizes artworks.

The art fair visitor equipped with the Collectrium mobile app will be able to point her iPhone at any registered artwork exhibited at the fair and:

-instantly receive extensive information on the artist and the piece; -add the artwork to “My Collection” favorites; -share with friends via Facebook, Twitter and email; -contact the gallery about the artwork.

So, now, no more scribbled notes on postcards and flyers: after exploring the art fairs with the Collectrium iPhone app, the collector can leave with a browsable list of her favorite artworks at the fairs, complete with detailed information on each work, artist, and exhibiting gallery. Even if the collector snaps an unidentified artwork, she can easily enter the information and personal notes about the piece. She will have created her own virtual gallery and catalogue.

“This is a social art management system, part of the next generation of tools for appreciating art,“ says Boris Pevzner, the former Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded Collectrium. “Our app makes the experience of visiting an art fair more interactive for the art lover—enhancing the on-site visit, while also allowing visitors to take the fair home with them.”

Pevzner concludes: “We’ve created a bridge between the physical and virtual art worlds by bringing the power of online technology to that live moment of discovery.”

In addition to using the Collectrium iPhone app to automatically identify artworks, visitors to the participating fairs will:

-browse the entire art show catalogue on their iPhone; -enter images, details and personal notes about works of art not registered in the system; -view all the programming and scheduling information about the fairs.

Furthermore, the visitors who store their own private collections on the web using Collectrium will have access to their artworks through the same mobile app, alongside the artworks exhibited at the art fairs.

“Collectrium’s image recognition capability is absolutely unique. It’s one reason I see them as the leader in the new breed of mobile and social applications for the art world,” said Alexis Hubshman, Founder and President of the SCOPE Art Fair.